The rapid growth of the information highway and, in particular, the Internet has transformed the way business is conducted worldwide. Indeed, the Internet, with its global network of individual computers and computer networks, all communicating with one another, continues to open new paths of communication between and among businesses. As an example, whereas E-mail was once limited to large user groups typically within a single corporation, it is now relied upon by most companies as a means to communicate both internally and externally.
In addition to E-mail transmissions, the Internet has been found to be a desirable network for routing facsimile transmissions. Presently, a calling party who wishes to send a facsimile over the Internet must first dial into a suitable Internet FAX gateway. This presents obvious usability and marketing problems because users must change their behavior. Specifically, they must have both knowledge of an appropriate gateway, as well as the tools to make the appropriate connection.
Consequently, a need exists for a method and system for detecting and automatically routing a facsimile transmission from a calling party to a called party over the Internet. Such a method and system should perform this operation in a manner which is transparent to the user and should be capable of being implemented using the public network switching and signaling.